Travis Mills on His New Album, Mental Health, and the Songwriting Process

Actor and musician Travis Mills is passionate about the songwriting process, especially how it evolves with time.

When it comes to new music, the co-host of MTV’s Help! I’m In A Secret Relationship! is stoked about his latest album release with Nick Gross — (E)Motion Sickness — under their Girlfriends project, which in many ways, according to Mills, showcases growth and maturity as individuals and as artists. “I think with self-improvement comes an articulation of the things you feel and want to say. The old way of coping with things and numbing yourself out with vices and substances…you just burn out quickly. I haven’t really seen anyone who can sustain it. It’s like, I love making music, I love playing shows, and I want to do this as long as I possibly can, so how do I do that?”

Over the course of AskMen’s conversation with Mills, he reveals more about his songwriting process, how he cares for his mental health, and the habits that help position his life and creativity for a long haul.

AskMen: How did your interest in music really begin?

Travis Mills: I’m a lifer, man. I remember being five or six years old in the back of my parents’ Ford Explorer listening to Nirvana Nevermind and looking at my little cousin who was in the backseat with me being like, “I want to do this.” She was like, “Do what?” And I’m like, “This [meaning music]. Whatever this is.”

My grandfather gave me an acoustic guitar when I was a kid and I had no idea what I was doing but I’d take it and just bang on it and strum on it and make all kinds of racquet, and God bless my parents for putting up with it all these years.

Was your parental support helpful then in giving you the confidence and space to pursue music as an interest and a career?

One-hundred percent, man. I have so many colleagues and friends who didn’t have that, and it just goes to show how privileged and grateful I am to have had a support system.

My parents weren’t musicians at all and I don’t come from a musical family. And while they couldn’t teach me how to read music or play a lick of it, they were the type of parents who were like, “If you want to be in a band, you can use our garage to practice.” They were always super supportive and still are to this day — coming to shows and wanting the best for me — and I couldn’t ask for more.

To any creative, whether you’re a painter, musician, actor, or anything like that — to have your family’s support means everything. You get so many “no’s” from the rest of the world that to have the people closest to you believe in you and champion you is priceless.

I’m sure it’s also validating at the end of the day if you feel like you had a less than ideal experience, you have them there encouraging you to keep at it.

It’s a blessing and a curse, especially as a teenager. If you play a horrible show and your mom’s there and she’s like, “Well, you still did great, sweetie,” you’re like, “Shut up, no, I didn’t, I was awful.” But it’s really cool to have them there and celebrate the wins with you as well.

In terms of those wins, was there a moment or set of experiences early on that clued you in to the idea that music was something that you were not only interested in, but something you’d be successful at?

When I was 17, I didn’t want to go to college and follow that traditional path. At the time, my parents were really hoping that I would go [and follow the traditional path]. I’d made a MySpace page and had started posting music on there, and I told my parents, “Look, I’m going to try this for one year and give it everything I’ve got and go super hard. If I can’t do something with this by the end of the year, then I’ll go to school.

Literally a year later, I put out a music video that I shot for one-hundred bucks, it went viral, and suddenly I was being flown to New York and being courted around Los Angeles by all of the record labels. I never looked back and I haven’t stopped since.

There’s huge value in setting goals with deadlines. Why did you pick a year?

Honestly, I was just procrastinating, dude. I was hopeful I’d figure something out, but I feel like my whole career has just been one happy accident after another. That’s not to say I don’t work hard or I’m not intentional with the stuff that I do, but you can’t plan for this stuff, especially in a game like music. You have to celebrate your luck when it happens and take your losses on the chin and keep moving forward when that does happen. But dude, I had no clue.

I come from a fairly small town where people don’t get record deals and that only happens in the movies, so when it started happening to me, I was like, “Pinch me, dude. I can’t believe this is real.”

Did you have to balance the surge of being humble and also the understanding that this is going to be your life from now on?

The irony of it all was that when I was experiencing “all of the stuff you dream about,” I was the most depressed, anxious, and angry that I ever was in my entire life. I really couldn’t figure it out.

Looking back now, I really wish I would have enjoyed those moments a lot more — and cherished them — because I was a super insecure, fragile and scared kid who came from nothing. When you see this kind of lifestyle change and all of these people doing these incredible things and you’re meeting people who you listened to on the radio and people who you’ve watched on television, there’s a bit of imposter syndrome that comes with it. It’s like, “Wow, why am I here? I don’t deserve this. I’m going to be found out. They’re going to figure out I’m a fraud and I’m going to have to go back to Riverside and live with my parents.”

There’s a lot of turmoil that comes with it, which is why I’m so grateful I got to start [Girlfriends], which is like a second chance in a lot of ways and a reminder to myself to sit back and enjoy the ride.

To that end, how did the Girlfriends project come about?

I’ve known Nick [Gross] for a long time and we’ve always been friends, though we’ve never made music together. When I still had my solo project, my drummer at the time couldn’t play a show and I needed someone to fill in. I knew Nick played drums and asked him if he wanted to do this Christmas charity show, which he was down for. He learned a bunch of songs, we played that one show together and it was amazing, but then went our separate ways.

We obviously stayed friends and kept in touch, and I took a three to four year hiatus from releasing my own music. Then in 2019, I saw Nick posted something on Instagram about how he missed being on the road and being on tour, so I called him and told him I was feeling the same way. I told him I was thinking about starting something new, but wanted it to be completely different. I had this idea of it being a two-piece and would love to meet up and listen to music that we’re [both] into and see if we’re on the same page and see if we could make something happen.

So we showed up to the studio and just hung out. We played each other records of things that we loved and what we thought it [a potential project together] could be. I’d also come to the studio with a couple of band names that I’d written down on my phone and the first one was “Girlfriends.” I told Nick and he was like, “That’s it!” I was like, “Dude, do you want to hear the other names?” And he was like, “Nah, this is perfect.” I was like, “Awesome. This was my favorite name, that’s why it was at the top of the list,” and to this day, he still hasn’t heard any of the other names.

Do you still have the note that has all of the names listed?

I do. And I’ve never told anyone the other band names.

In terms of the music, you’ve got your new Girlfriends album (E)Motion Sickness. What was the motivation behind it and what was the creative process like?

We spent a year and a half working on this record, which is a lot longer than we got to spend on our first one. I feel like we made our debut record in like 4 to 5 months with us putting stuff down and being like, “Oh, this amazing,” kind of just getting it out. With this, we definitely took our time and I feel like we crafted a pretty cohesive album. We went a lot deeper and I got even more honest and vulnerable in the songwriting.

I think Nick and I — obviously with spending more time together — you build more of a bond and a connection and we really explored that on this second record.

On the first record, we did everything in the studio with John Feldmann, and this time, Nick and I started a lot of these songs outside the studio, got to write some demos and bring them back in, which was super different for us. I really enjoyed that. We wrote 50 or 60 songs for this album and narrowed it down to 15 that made the cut, which was cool.

With such song volume, what’s that selection process like? Is it simply picking the songs that resonate with you the most or are you trying to pick tracks that fit an overall theme to the album?

It’s just a lot of listening. It’s all a feeling. What do we gravitate towards the most? I’m so neurotic, certain days I’ll love a song, and the next day I listen to it I’ll think it’s the worst thing I’ve ever made. Three days later, I’ll love it again. It’s just these checks and balances of how a song sits with us and how we feel a month or 2 months after we’ve made it. Does it still feel the same? Does it take on a different meaning? And then yeah, how does it fit with these other songs that we already know are going on the record?

There are also certain ideas that are really cool that you never get around to finishing. For one reason or another, something doesn’t work, and you’ve got to be cool with letting it go and moving on to the next. I’ve tried to not be so precious with ideas because I feel like the harder you try to hold on to something and keep it, you’re just blocking yourself from the next thing.

That actually happened a couple of times on this record. We would be trying something for so long and it wouldn’t happen until we’d move on, and then 10 minutes into a new idea we’d have this amazing song.

So it’s sort of like releasing control, doing what you can do, and letting the process take over.

You never know when inspiration can strike, and I think the thing that I’ve worked on the most is finding the discipline to make myself record a voice note or write down lyrics when it does strike. I used to be falling asleep and I’d think of a cool lyric, and I’d be like, “Eh, I’ll write it down in the morning.” But then you wake up and it’s not there.

It’s then adjusting your way of being to accommodate the in-flow so that you’re there to capture it, rather than trying to sit down and force it out.

Steven Pressfield — an incredible author — has written a bunch of books on inspiration and how to be a true creative professional which have changed the way I think about songwriting. Instead of just showing up and hoping I’m inspired, it’s really about sitting down and doing the work.

A true professional will write even when he’s not inspired and wait until that inspiration comes, and that’s something I’ve tried to do. Songwriting is definitely a muscle. If I take two months off without writing — which I don’t really do — then it’s definitely harder to get back into the groove rather than when you’re in your zone and things are coming to you naturally.

If we only did things when we were inspired we’d probably do very few things. Professionals get into the habit and inspiration comes when they sit down and do the work.

Would you say reading the Pressfield books and retooling your habits has helped you be successful from the incremental changes that you’ve made, or has it been a wide sweep of adjustments that you’ve made over the course of your career?

Looking back on my career, I haven’t had a “real” job in the last 13 or 14 years. Seeing all of the mistakes I made when I was younger, the things I took for granted, the things I should have done, and not letting those things happen again. With time comes experience, and I hope to God you’re learning through experience, because if you’re not, you’re just wasting your time.

I’m like a self-help book junkie. I’ll read anything that I feel can help me become a better version of me. I love it. I’m a big champion for therapy and finding out why I do the things that I do, what I think the way that I think, and how I can become a more optimized version of myself. I know it’s not the “rockstar” mentality — partying, getting drunk, and living life on the edge — but that’s not me and that’s not how I feel like I want to live.

Would you say then that opening yourself up more on your new record is the result of the culmination of all of your experiences to date?

Anytime I write, I write from the perspective of my life. It doesn’t need to be a certain time period or day or month, I can pull inspiration from when I was thirteen, fifteen, and seventeen years old. There’s no expiration date for inspiration when I write songs.

I think the latest album was a lot about how I was feeling, and there are also songs on the record where I was having fun where I’m talking about the good things in my life. I know a lot of artists can relate to this, but when you’re happy, it can be a scary thing. I know for myself, I make the best art when I’m tortured and sad and stuff like that. So when things are going well and you’re happy it’s scary because you’re like, “Am I going to have anything to write about?

Is it a different process when you’re writing from a positive or negative headspace?

I think I’m still trying to figure that out. I don’t have the answer. I ask people, too. I’m like, “How do you write good songs when nothing bad is happening?” [Laughs] That’s just part of being a songwriter. I guess you’ll have to ask me in a couple years.

In terms of balance, how do you have the career you have and also find time for yourself, family, and friends?

I’m notoriously bad with that. I have 12 jobs and all of them keep me insanely busy. Even on tour, I’m doing my Apple Music radio shows from the back of the tour bus, and then I’m flying from the tour to shoot my MTV show, and then flying from MTV back to that. I haven’t mastered the whole balancing act yet, but I’m really trying.

The big thing for me that keeps me in the right headspace to keep going is definitely my health journey and getting back into the gym and taking care of my body. I think oftentimes you put yourself through this rigorous schedule and stuff. It's really easy to treat yourself badly and drink and smoke and just put yourself through the ringer because there’s no other outlet. So shifting those priorities and those outlets to taking care of myself in a good way so that I can do this for a long time has been extremely helpful.

I’m someone who suffers from depression and anxiety and stuff, and if I start my day with something that I don’t want to do — like going to the gym or going for a long run — it makes the rest of my day so much easier. I start the day off with a win that I can check off and carry myself through the rest of the day a lot lighter.

It’s like the expression “Eat your frogs.”

Dude! I just read that book. It’s so true. Eat that frog.

It’s just doing the things that I really don’t want to do, and I’ve been trying to do that in every aspect of my life. Like emails that pile up that I really don’t want to deal with and usually just close my computer and go do something else. It’s just sitting there and doing it, and after you feel so good when you get it done that it propels you to clean your room or make your bed. It sounds corny and sounds like something your parents would tell you but they know something that we don’t. That works.

Follow @travismills and check out https://girlfriends.komi.io for tickets and tour dates

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